Chipotle's Hot Mess: How The Beloved Chain Let America Down

Maybe it was that Super Bowl commercial that got us—the one with the adorable, stop-motion pigs. Or perhaps it was the quiet, well-designed logo...or those original essays from Toni Morrison or Malcolm Gladwell printed on their bags. It might have been that time their viral video of a scarecrow dressed in farmer's overalls made us cry, for goodness sake. Or all that talk about sustainability, and organic whatever, and eating local at a time when people were people were finally starting to care about that stuff. Maybe that's why we trusted them so absolutely.

Chipotle, the Mexican chain with nearly 2,000 locations nationwide, just seemed like a better place to eat than other fast food spots. Which is why it was particularly distressing when their food made over 500 people in nine states sick over the last year. Suddenly, our somewhat virtuous guilty pleasure was tainted. If you couldn't trust Chipotle, a company that literally promised "food with integrity," who could you trust?

At a certain point, the headlines started blending together. First, there were the five customers who became ill with E. coli after eating at a Seattle location in July 2015. Just a handful of people, we collectively assumed, who probably all ate from the same diced-up tomato or something—an easy incident to ignore. Then came the norovirus outbreak from a Chipotle in Simi Valley, CA that sickened 234 people in August 2015. That same month, salmonella poisoned 64 people at 22 different Chipotle restaurants.

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It all happened so quickly—within the span of weeks—that you almost needed to double check: Was this the same incident? Oh wait, another one? E. coli and salmonella and norovirus?

At the time, Chipotle (via the Minnesota Health Department) determined that they found salmonella on its tomatoes, so company execs changed suppliers and eliminated that particular problem. But norovirus struck at a location in Boston, where a sick employee must have contaminated the food with his illness.

If you couldn't trust Chipotle, a company that literally promised "food with integrity," who could you trust?

By the late fall, it was only the most die-hard, most fearless fans who were still risking their health for a taste of that sweet barbacoa—college kids. A staggering 141 people got sick, almost all of them Boston College students days away from their finals, including much of the men's basketball team. It was so disastrous, the university had to develop a response plan, which included a good scrubbing of the campus dining halls, dorms and nearly every other public facility.

Meanwhile, E. coli outbreaks had been hitting other states across the country. Twenty people got so sick they were hospitalized. In an effort to determine the cause, Chipotle closed all of its restaurants in Oregon and Washington in November to work with local officials. But even after that huge effort—even in the face of this unbelievable mess—it still seemed like some Chipotle restaurant employees still weren't taking it as seriously as the rest of us. When the Washington restaurants finally opened back up, one of the Seattle locations was almost immediately called out for various health-code violations.

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How could such a beloved restaurant—one that seemed to care so much about its public image—be asleep at the wheel? Chipotle seemed to be getting hit from all sides: It was dirty food, it was supply-chain issues, it was poor safety standards, it was sick employees coughing on the burrito line.

It was only a matter of time before lawyers got involved. Even to this day, the company is battling a flurry of lawsuits, like theclass-action suit over their negligence as well as acivil case from their investors and stockholders for not disclosing that their quality-control standards weren't up to snuff. Then came the big guns: In January 2016, the Justice Department and FDA subpoenaed the company's records as part of a criminal investigation related to the Simi Valley, CA, outbreak.

Most of us never thought we'd hear "criminal" and "Chipotle" in the same sentence. Basically the feds are suggesting that Chipotle employees, from the corporate staffers to the hourly guac slingers, were knowingly messing up. And if so many were well aware of the disgusting mistakes they were making, the company seemed more than just gross. It seemed kind of evil.

As scary as that thought is, the fact that's even more frightening is that no one knows how to stop these outbreaks—not Chipotle, not even the Center for Disease Control. "The system they have isnot able to solve the problem we have at hand," said Ian Williams, the chief of the CDC branch that deals with outbreak response and prevention. In short, Chipotle would have to take everything apart and start over.

These don't seem like advances to the complicated operations of a giant restaurant chain—they're the laws of basic hygiene and common sense.

"If there's a silver lining in this, it is that by not knowing for sure what the cause is, it's prompted us to look at every ingredient we use with an eye to improving our practices," said Chipotle's director of public relations, Chris Arnold. A bunch of sick college students opened a window of opportunity for the company.

Now, Chipotle has gone into major damage-control mode. Execs have extended paid sick leave to hourly workers, and ill employees are forced to take off until they've recovered. The company also has new policies on how restaurant workers prep some of the vegetables, and are enforcing stricter hand-washing rules. But some skeptics say that these don't seem like advances to the complicated operations of a giant restaurant chain; they're the laws of basic hygiene and common sense.

So the question remains: When can we have our burritos bowls again?

Arnold told Delish, helpfully, that the company would be "sharing more details on this stuff at a four-hour national employee meeting that's being held today, February 8." For four hours today, Chipotle is closing all of its restaurants—almost 2,000 locations—and from behind the locked doors, employees will discuss what has happened, and learn the overarching procedural changes the company is making.

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The current uncertainty is troubling to lawyer Bill Marler, a food-safety advocate who has lawsuits pending against Chipotle locations in Massachusetts, California, and Minnesota. "I've been less than impressed with Chipotle's response to the outbreaks," he says. "They haven't been transparent. Food safety is really a top-down issue. You need to have a CEO who lives and breathes it."

America loves a comeback story almost as much as it loves burritos, so most people are just waiting for someone important to give them the go-ahead to go back. (The CDC basically made such a claim last week.) But will that be enough?

To be fair, other companies have dug themselves out of similar holes before. In 1993, an E. coli outbreak at Jack in the Box sickened almost 800 people, killed 4, and permanently injured almost 200. The chain survived by innovating its food-safety practices. Same for Odwalla, which started pasteurizing its juices after an E. coli outbreak killed one child and sickened 70 people in 1996. Today Odwalla enjoys a stellar reputation as a natural-foods company.

Of course, the term "natural-foods company" has never felt more meaningless. "There's this myth that as long as it's organic and local and you can see your farmer and shake his hand that somehow, miraculously, it's free of pathogens," says Marler. "I think that Chipotle started to believe that [using] organic, non-GMO, humanely raised, local ingredients made their food safe and that they became immune from bacterial and viral problems."

In the face of such a bitter reality, it kind of seems like the only thing that could make you feel better is a chicken burrito bowl: that fluffy cilantro rice, the sweet tomatoes, the bright green dollop of fresh guacamole and all the extra spicy salsa you can eat. But not today. Today, Chipotle is closed.

"A Chipotle Taco Made Me Deathly Ill"

One woman explains her two-month battle with a bacterial infection, which she believes came from a sofritas taco. Read more here.

"Working At Chipotle Is So Different Now"

One employee in Texas breaks down exactly how dramatically different his job (and your burrito) has become since the outbreaks began. Read more here.

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